My son got some money for xmas so he was thrilled to be able to upgrade from his trial account to the War chest (standard edition) Wrath of the Lich King. We followed the instructions and downloaded the digital things and he has continued adventuring with his characters he started in the trial version and one is now on level 23 so its clear his paid subscription is working. I think he was expecting more of a fanfare when he started going beyond level 20 but I suspect being used to the trial version he has kind of become used to it all.

Are there any things he should be aiming for that will really make his upgrade worthwhile? I guess he should just keep plugging away getting to the higher levels. Getting a flying mount is his goal!

Also how do the different editions separate each other? If we have wrath of the lich king how does that limit your play in the realm? Does your entry mean you don't overlap with people who are playing other versions such as Mists of Pandaria? Or is the world all open and depending on which one you bought you have different restrictions?

The only restrictions you will experience without having all expansions is that you will not have access to the zones connected to the missing expansions. You will also have a lower maximum level for your character. I think Pandaren as a playable race are only available if you have Mists of Pandaria but they opened all other expansion-related races up for everyone, afaik. Pet battles are not restricted either, me thinks.

For now having all expansions is not that important since your son is still in the 'leveling and exploring the game' state. But if he wants to partake in the endgame content he will have to buy all expansions and add them to his account.

Edit to add: I would strongly advise for your son to buy an authenticator in the Blizzard Shop. The price is $7 or something and it makes the WoW account much much more secure. Sadly, there are many people earning money by hacking accounts and stripping them bare. And I can't think of a single thing destroying the fun you have with this game as completely as losing every item and gold your character has ever earned.

Second edit: On a similar note tell him to not EVER buy gold for real life money or make use of any third party service that needs him to give away his account information. Either he will get hacked afterwards or banned if Blizzard finds out that he did violate the Terms of Agreement.

With an upgrade, and subscription, I believe you now have access to the auction house, guilds, pet battles, and a slew of other features. You're still in the same realm as everyone else, the current 5.1.X patch, however, you will still be locked out of Cataclysm and Mists of Panderia areas and some features and cannot level past 80.

The one thing I would suggest, is to look for a guild. Being that this is for your son, look for a casual, family oriented guild. Your servers official forums will probably have various guild posting that they're looking for more members. The forums can be found on the official site.

once upgraded I know you can: Join a guild, make a party, obtain more gold, reply to whispers. Sure there is other stuff as well. With only up to LK you can not: go into the Cata only zones, this does not count the old zones that were changed. Just the 80+ stuff. Also can not go in to the MoP zones.

You can however create a Pandarian and play through it's zone. Or I was able to with 2 trial accounts and my main account (I tri-boxed a bit while on vacation this past week).

You can roll a pandaren even if you do not have MoP, just not a monk. Unsure about worgen and goblin, I want to say you can play as them also.

To answer the OP, your son is limited a bit on what he can do. Unless he finds a guild that would regularly run old raid content (if raiding interests him) raiding won't be an option. Pet battles are another thing that your son cannot do, since it requires MoP to pick up the skill for it.

That said he has 80 levels of content to go through and a metric ton of things to do along the way. Classic 1-60, Outland 60-70 and Lich King 70-80. All the classes (minus monk) and all the races (not sure about worgen and goblin). Not sure if he can pick up flying for classic wow either. Hmm, would have to look into that. He cannot fly in classic zones without Cataclysm expansion. But he will be able to fly in Outland and Northrend.

Great. Thanks for the answers. Those security dangers are good to know and all the other detail.

Has the Wrath of the Lich King got a specific series of missions? Obviously there are many missions but are there a set of core ones that take you through some major story of the Lich King? I think my son was expecting it to be kind of linear once he plugged into an expansion.

While Classic and Burning Crusades have more of a "zone only stories", Wrath of the Lich King starts to move the story and slowly build up towards the raid at Ice Crown Citadel. Don't get me wrong it is still heavily "zone only stories" but you will actually be interacting with either the Lich King or something from his past.

You should be able to do pet battles without the Mists of Panderia as well, however, you will not be able to go into the Cataclysm and Mists for those pets. But, just something else to look forward too!

I second the family friendly, casual guild. He will have a much nicer time grouping with a few friends than a random set of people who are rushing through content.

The flying mount is a big milestone, and will be great fun when he gets it.

I'd have him go back and pick up skinning, and maybe mining or herbalism. He will need to go back to earlier areas to start the professions up from scratch, but he will quickly be able to skin or gather resources in his current zone. Get the addon "Auctionator" from curse.com (I recommend the curse client to manage addons). Use Auctionator to sell the mats he gathers on the AH (there will be new buy and sell tabs on the bottom of the AH window). Just to reiterate, never buy gold. Doing so cheapens the game and robs you of the feeling of accomplishment.

I hope your son enjoys his time leveling. The first time through can be amazing.

Has the Wrath of the Lich King got a specific series of missions? Obviously there are many missions but are there a set of core ones that take you through some major story of the Lich King? I think my son was expecting it to be kind of linear once he plugged into an expansion.

One "not to miss" quest line is the Wrath Gate story line, pretty epic.

My son says he does not know how to start the classic addition or the burning crusade. If you buy the expansion digitally do you have to start it a different way? Does it start at a certain level? Because at the moment he is a level 29 dwarf paladin? Is there a specific point at which it begins?

Everything starts at level 1 and runs as far as level 60/70/80/85/90, with each break representing one expansion. Depending on what package you bought, he should have at least Classic (1-60) and TBC (Burning Crusade) which expands that content out to level 70. It is possible to enter the TBC area (Outland) at earlier levels, but for a new player there is little purpose in doing so. He will start getting quests that take him in the direction of TBC around the mid 50s and should enter Outland around 58-60. He'll need to be 60 to get his first flying mount and it may actually be slightly cheaper for him to go back to Stormwind or Orgrimmar to buy the mount and skill. Caveat: He will need to buy separate flying skills for different areas (Classic, TBC, Wrath, Mists), the first skill will only let him fly in Outland.

When does the TBC story begin? Events in the 1-60 zones contain foreshadowing, but the real kick off will be when he gets the quest "Through the Dark Portal".

Edit: Be sure to have him watch the opening cinematic (opening screen has a button to click) for each segment of WoW. That will give him more of a feeling for what is going on at each point, instead of leaving him wondering why he is killing pigs and collecting scrap metal at 58.

Edited, Jan 7th 2013 6:23am by Rhodekylle

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One "not to miss" quest line is the Wrath Gate story line, pretty epic.

Sadly they removed the Undercity followup, I think to remember. That was fun, too.

Or did they remove the Wrath Gate event entirely? It's been a while since I last leveled through Northrend.

Edited, Jan 6th 2013 4:14am by TherealLogros

It's still there, or at least was when I was last leveling in that zone during Cata. But you are correct in that the Undercity portion has been removed, along with the part at the end where you pick up Saurfangs armour and return it to his father.